A girl holds a letter as she greets Pope Francis as he arrives to lead his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican Sept. 11. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“The
ChurchI repeat once againis not a relief organization, an
enterprise nor an NGO (Non-Government Organization), but a community
of people, animated by the Holy Spirit, who have lived and are living
the wonder of the encounter with Jesus Christ and want to share their
experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the Lord gave
us. It is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church in this path.”

In
contrast with his usual custom of keeping what he says brief and to
the point, Pope Francis wrote a fairly long message (about one full
page in L’Osservatore Romano) for Mission Sunday, which will
be observed on October 20, 2013. This letter is rather wide ranging.
It strikes me as giving more insight into what Pope Bergoglio is
about than almost anything I have previously come across, except
perhaps Lumen Fidei.

This
Pope’s evident optimism has always puzzled me because he does have,
at the same time, a pretty good grasp of the real and growing
obstacles to the presence of Christianity in almost every sector of
the world and its culture. Near the end of this Message, for
instance, Pope Francis tells us:

I wish to say a word about those Christians, who, in various parts of
the world, encounter difficulty in openly professing their faith and
in enjoying the legal right to practice it in a worthy manner. They
are our brothers and sisters, courageous witnesseseven more
numerous than the martyrs of the early centurieswho endure with
apostolic perseverance many contemporary forms of persecution. Quite
a few also risk their lives to remain faithful to the Gospel of
Christ.

We do not
hear of President Obama or other political leaders drawing “red
lines” about such persecution of Catholics. Evidently, the
persecution of Christians is not a public or world problem. Indeed,
for all too many, Christianity, particularly Catholicism, is the
world problem, best to marginalize it or, better, to eliminate it.

The Pope
does not give any names of those who do the persecuting. I am not
happy about this. But I understand that, if you mention persecution,
especially in Islamic states, Christians are then persecuted with
greater force. You are blamed for it. Very few places can be found in
the world where Catholicism can be freely, openly, and legally
present. The fact is that also in the so-called democracies, the
prevalent mood of the public order is to reduce religion to the
exclusively private sphere with no presence allowed in education,
health, culture or other normal areas of human life.

The Pope
seems aware of these issues but he remains relatively unconcerned
about them. He has an approach to the world through worship,
community, and joy that is not deterred by what in fact are huge and
growing problems that can only properly be designated as persecution.
Nevertheless, he even seems to think that the world could change very
rapidly and unexpectedly, not unlike the effect of John Paul II as
contrasted to all those exerts who assumed that Marxism was here for
the duration.

II.

To
understand what the Pope is about, we begin with faith. “Faith is
God’s precious gift which opens our minds to know and love him. He
wants to enter into relationship with us and allow us to participate
in his own life.” Several things are to be emphasized here. Faith
is not something we conjure up on our own. If we could formulate what
faith teaches by our own powers alone, we would not need it. Faith,
like creation itself, has the status of “gift,” not that of
necessity. We do not have a “right” to it, even though it is at
least offered to everyone. The other side of this gift-status,
however, is that our constitution, worldview, or politics ought not
to go out of its way to prevent us from hearing and practicing what
this faith is about. Faith comes by hearing and listening, as Paul
said. But much can be done today by governments, media, and other
associations to prevent anything tinged with faith from being heard,
printed, or even spoken. Try to bring a Bible into an Islamic country
or mention God in a public school.

However,
this “gift” contains somethingan understanding, an
intelligibility addressed to the mind. It is designed to “open”
our minds. The faith is in line with reason. Indeed, I would say that
faith makes reason more what it is, that is, more reasonable. This
“more” means that, if our philosophy, if what we know by reason,
is in line with what is, the faith will come across to us as
making sense of issues we did not otherwise figure out by ourselves.
Faith was not designed to make us ignorant but to provide us more
“mind” so that we could see how much more there is to see than
what we know by ourselves.

We hear
talk of “man’s search for God.” But it rarely occurs to us that
all the while God is searching for us. If this searching is so, we
might ask: Why cannot God find us? Doesn’t He know where we are?
This is the point. We cannot be found even by God unless we are
willing to be found, that is, unless we are willing to admit that we
don’t already know everything. Many are reluctant to admit this
personal side of a lack of faith. The essence of modernity is that we
need only ourselves. More explicitly, we prevent God from knowing us
if we are sinners, or better, if we are not willing to admit that we
need to be forgiven.

We need
to realize that we cannot explain the world except through God and
His purpose for us. God wants us to participate in His life; we are
in fact created to lead a life that is beyond our natural capacity.
We are invited into this life with creation itself. But God also made
us free. He knows that no living the life of God is possible unless
we want to live it. So faith, reason, and will come together, as the
Pope intimates in his brief introductory sentence.

Pope
Francis thus adds that the faith is not for a “few.” But still it
“needs to be accepted.” In short, God does not want to be in our
hearts if we do not want Him there. “Everyone should be able to
experience that joy of being loved by God.” Moreover, this “gift
of salvation” is not something that we can or should keep to
ourselves. This is where the theme of the mission comes in. “If we
want to keep it (the faith) only to ourselves, we will become
isolated, sterile and sick.” I had several student friends who went
to World Youth Day in Rio. This sense of joy was the sort of feeling
or atmosphere that the pope creates around him, as the students
recalled it.

“The
proclamation of the Gospel is part of being disciples of Christ and
is a constant commitment that animates the whole life of the Church.”
The Church does not exist for itself alone and its present members.
The Apostles are “fishers of men.” Something exists in the Church
that seeks to gather others to itself. This is, of course, nothing
less than the Holy Spirit. Following a comment of Benedict XVI, Pope
Francis adds: “Each (Catholic) community is ‘mature’ when it
professes faith, celebrates it with joy during the liturgy, lives
charity, proclaiming the Word of God endlessly, leaves its own to
take it to the ‘peripheries,’ especially to those who have not
yet had the opportunity to know Christ.” The spirit of Pope
Francis, as I see it, is contained in this passage. When anyone comes
within a Catholic church, it is this spirit and joy that the Pope
wants everyone to see there, even if it is a persecuted Church.

III.

What is
this “missionary spirit”? It is not only about “geographical
territories, but about peoples, cultures and individuals, because the
‘boundaries’ of faith do not only cross places and human
traditions, but the heart of each man and each woman.” This too is
a remarkable sentence. We cannot confine the spirit to nations and
cultures. Individuals from any religion, philosophy, or place can be
touched. This is why we have individual Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and
atheists suddenlynot often, to be surebut actually to be
touched by a grace that he accepts. Many of the greatest saints and
figures in Catholicism have gone this route and still do so today. On
the other hand, Pope Francis adds that everyone has also to be aware
of making the faith known to others. The Apostles themselves were
witnesses to churches in different areas in their travels. An
“apostolic community is not complete unless it aims at bearing
witness to Christ before all nations and before all peoples.”

But does
not this emphasis on making the faith known go directly against
multiculturalism and does it not smack of “proselytism”? Both
external and internal obstacles come up to prevent this missionary
aspect to flourish. If a parish or culture lacks joy and delight in
the faith and in truth, how will it appear to those outside of it? To
make his point, Francis cited Paul VI who said (Evangelium
Nuntiandi, #80) that it is indeed wrong to “impose” faith on
anyone. “But to propose to their consciences the truth of the
Gospel and salvation in Jesus Christ, with complete clarity and total
respect for free options which is presents…is a tribute to this
freedom.” The truth is that there are few places where this sort of
freedom is actually practiced or allowed to be practiced.

Pope
Francis seems to understand this difficulty. We must be joyful and
announce the Gospel. Christ came to “show the way to salvation.”
We are to make it known “to the ends of the earth.” Yet, “all
too often we see that it is violence, lies, and mistakes that are
emphasized and proposed.” This is how the Church is pictured.
Thus, “it is urgent in our time to announce and witness to the
goodness of the Gospel, and this from within the Church itself.”
Again, this passage is the key to Pope Francis’s approach to the
modern world. We all know about men as sinners, especially clergy and
Christians. But we forget that Christ came so that sins might be
forgiven, not that they be so totally eradicated that His presence is
no longer necessary and freedom no longer allowed. But still the
words of Christ are to be known to “the ends of the world.”

Yet, “one
cannot announce Christ without the Church.” Francis makes this
point graphic by citing Paul VI: “When an unknown preacher,
catechist, or Pastor preaches the Gospel, gathers the little
community together, administers a Sacrament, even alone, he is
carrying out an ecclesial act.” What we are stands within the
grace and understanding of what the Church is, the Body of Christ.
Still, a large number of those who had the faith fall away under the
pressures of their own sins or the temptations of the culture.
Moreover, “a large part of humanity has not yet been reached by the
good news of Jesus Christ.” Francis does not seem to be discouraged
by any of this. We should just preach the Gospel “courageously and
in every situation.” The temptation is to judge the Church by
modern sociological or political standards and not vice versa.

The Pope
is blunt, in words I cited above: “The ChurchI repeat againis
not a relief organization, an enterprise or an NGO, but a community
of people, animated by the Holy Spirit, who have lived and are living
the wonder of the encounter with Jesus Christ, and want to share this
experience of deep joy, the message of salvation that the Lord gave
us.” It is this “spirit of joy” that seems to be, as it were,
Pope Francis’ “ace in the hole.” It is this spirit that he
knows is the key that men of our and any time are looking for in all
they look for. “It is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church on its
path.” It is this sense of confidence that animates Pope Francis.

The Pope
then calls frankly for missionaries. Bishops are to pay attention to
this need. Missionaries have a double purpose. One is to bring the
good news to those who do not know it or to those who have lost it.
But secondly it is to bring back the “freshness” of the lives of
Christians in communities we do not know. This is what the Apostles
did in their journeys. It is at this point that Francis adds the
remarks that I cited above on the persecuted Church all around us,
but largely unrecognized by our contemporaries, even by ourselves.

We
sometimes are tempted to think that things look hopeless. There is no
doubt that the disorders of our time show marks of diabolical logic
and force. The Pope frequently touches on this presence himself. But
his response is that of John XXIII, John Paul II, and Benedict
XVI“courage.” And he adds a surprising comment of Benedict.
“The word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified
everywhere.” The disorders of our time are in fact so bizarre and
painful that men in their heart cannot help but seeing that something
is radically wrong. The “abolition of man” seems almost complete.
Where to turn? I think when men finally choose to see the human
greatness of a John Paul II, the intelligence and wisdom of a
Benedict XVI, and the joy of Pope Francis, it may become obvious that
the Holy Spirit has indeed been there all the time.

We need
not cease in pounding away at the aberrations of our times, for they
are indeed great. But we do see that something else is also at work
in our midst. That something else, the breath of the Holy Spirit, the
plan of the Father, is also there in our very souls if we will allow
ourselves to see it. This is why Pope Francis tells us that the
Church is not a welfare agency or a government program, but an
experience of deep joy and salvation. It is the Holy Spirit that
guides us. Who else? This is the message of mission that Pope Francis
seems to have seen in a world full of sins and disorders of the most
terrible kinds, things we won’t acknowledge until we encounter the
joy in the community that worships God in the manner that God
Himself, in the Incarnation and Crucifixion, taught us.

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